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I bit my lip. “What does one have to do with the other? Besides, who’s to say he even views me that way?”
Macy snorted. “Girl, if he’s cool with dropping some fertilizer on your garden, he’s thinking long-term.” She shifted and gave me a serious look. “Part of serving coffee every day is learning what people want. He might be quiet, but I would bet a tasty slice of sourdough he’s looking for home, hearth, and a sweet wife to make him those sticky buns he likes so much.”
“Petit fours,” I immediately corrected, though he enjoyed sticky buns too. I knew a lot about his wants when it came to food and drink.
Now I was learning what he liked outside of the café too. Outside of the bedroom even, despite the many hours we’d spent there already.
He’d been chomping at the bit for our “real” date, but I’d put it off a bit longer than originally planned because I liked the anticipation. Besides, every day with Murphy felt like a date.
A dream.
It hadn’t taken long for us to fall into a routine. He took me to work. He picked me up from work. When he could, he’d visit for lunch and we’d grab the most sequestered table to laugh over our days and tease each other as much as possible.
And after work, we’d eat dinner and fall into bed—and on the chaise and on the counter and wherever else struck our fancy—until neither of us could speak. Cuddling together in the afterglow led to a few precious hours sleeping tangled together. He was a furnace and I’d awakened a few times from hot flashes, but he didn’t bitch that I was a cover hog and had a tendency to whack him in the face when I turned over.
Everything was perfect. Even the non-perfect things like Latte watching us have sex, his tiny head tilted, or jumping around yipping when we were making too much noise, was perfect.
All this perfection was scary as fuck for a girl like me.
Because Macy was right. Murphy was a traditional guy. He called his mother every week, for God’s sake. I saw it noted in his datebook like an appointment he would never break. And my mother didn’t even send back Christmas cards some years.
Did we really make sense beyond the thrill of a new sexual relationship? Especially when what I wanted was probably so different from what he was looking for?
Assuming we hadn’t come together in such an unorthodox way, that is.
I pressed a hand to my dancing belly. I truly didn’t know. I didn’t know much except he made me feel so good.
So happy.
And Macy was still talking, and I had not been listening to her while I was off in my Murphy-related reverie. That was happening more and more lately.
Clearly, I was dealing with the onset of some kind of mental flu.
Like lovesickness squared.
“Can you believe she still hasn’t popped? I swear, I half wonder if they got the knocked up date wrong, or else she’s giving birth to an elephant and not a human child. They want to induce her soon, but she’s being stubborn as two cats about her baby taking her own time and to leave her the hell alone.” Macy pounded the starter with the finesse of a boxer preparing for a prize fight. Poor defeated bread. “Honestly, the woman deserves a medal for sainthood. If my ankles looked like hers, I’d probably excavate the kid myself with Vaseline and strong rope.”
Horrified, I stared at the side of Macy’s head. She was so lovely, and even more beautiful when she took the time to fuss with her hair and makeup—which was rare—but she had a streak inside her I could not comprehend. “We’re talking about Rylee, right?”
“No, we’re talking about the Virgin Mary. Do you know any other preggos about to pop?” She rolled her eyes and flipped her dough. “Oh, sorry, I forgot we live beside Sperm River.”
I laughed. “You’re too much.”
“Have you seen her? The poor woman.” Macy shook her head. “If Gage came near me with his baseball bat again, I’d probably lock him in his tool shed.”
We were still giggling about all manner of metaphors for dicks and male captivity when a loud cry sounded from the front of the café—and it wasn’t a displeased customer.
Macy and I exchanged a look as she wiped her fl
our-laden hands on a towel. “Baby,” she muttered.
I grinned. “Yay. Let’s go see which one.”
“You’re a sadist.” But she was already pushing me out of the main part of the kitchen into the café.
Rylee and Kelsey Kramer were holding court near the doors, proffering a small male child swaddled in a bright yellow blanket and matching hat. Rylee was not smiling. In fact, she was rubbing the side of her massive belly and rocking from side to side.
No one appeared to notice. The café patrons’ attention was focused squarely on one Sean Kramer, barely a few months old and already winning ladies’ hearts en masse.
